Comments on: Generous anger: George Orwell on fighting the good fight

By: Cheryl F

Cheryl F — Tue, 18 May 2021 02:26:10 +0000

I’m with James. Now in my 60s, I often feel like I’ve heard it all before – the angry rants. A range of issues don’t seem to go away, merely come round again. Therefore, my challenge is to remember that it is not just the issues that come around again after decades, but also the excuses! It is the excuses that get me really wild these days. The reasons trotted out as to why we can’t take action, why the status quo is the least dangerous option, why things which could have been done decades ago still aren’t done. It is the casual dismissal of young people’s anger at the threat of climate change. The same casual dismissal with which older people dismissed my youthful generation’s protest against the threat of nuclear war 40 years ago. Yes by my age I know there are not any easy quick fixes. So I believe we should age with ‘generous anger’ all the more. If the fixes were easy, then complacency could be excused.

By: Michael Frost

Michael Frost — Tue, 18 May 2021 00:11:30 +0000

In reply to Jane. Yay! Go you!

By: Michael Frost

Michael Frost — Tue, 18 May 2021 00:10:18 +0000

In reply to James McAulay. You sound awesome to me, James. That's how I want to age - passionate, curious, radical, and generous. Thank you for sharing a bit about yourself.

By: Jane

Jane — Mon, 17 May 2021 22:47:15 +0000

In reply to James McAulay.

This all gives me heart. To be angry, but a peacemaker; to be generous, but to (as Bruce Cockburn puts it) “punch at the darkness until it bleeds daylight”. I’m taking my smallness – my mustard-seed of faith into the fight again today.

By: James McAulay

James McAulay — Mon, 17 May 2021 16:57:57 +0000

I was an admirer of Orwell in my youth, but I have not read his work recently. Now I am quite old (aged 74) in in fairly poor health with a treatable, but incurable cancer, myeloma, which I have survived for 13 years, much longer than most people with this diagnosis. I am a retired GP. I like the expression ‘generous anger’. I have heard it said that if there is anything worse than an angry young man, it is an angry old man. I think I am an an angry old man (could be a good thing), rather than a grumpy old man (a bad thing). If I am an angry old man, I hope it is with a constructive and GENEROUS spirit. I have been a committed Christian since my teens. I was brought up in a very rigid and authoritarian belief system, but from my early years, rebelled, necessarily quietly at first, without losing the essence of my faith. I now see the global implications of my faith and campaign on issues like climate change, child poverty, immigration issues etc. I am deeply aware of ethical, moral, and political issues. Unlike many, if not most of my contemporaries, I have become more radical as I have aged. I read a lot, including theology, history and novels.